Notes from the Underground
spoke in the first chapter. After my affair with the officer I felt
even more drawn there than before: it was on the Nevsky that I met him
most frequently, there I could admire him. He, too, went there chiefly
on holidays, He, too, turned out of his path for generals and persons
of high rank, and he too, wriggled between them like an eel; but
people, like me, or even better dressed than me, he simply walked over;
he made straight for them as though there was nothing but empty space
before him, and never, under any circumstances, turned aside. I gloated
over my resentment watching him and ... always resentfully made way for
him. It exasperated me that even in the street I could not be on an
even footing with him.
“Why must you invariably be the first to move aside?” I kept asking
myself in hysterical rage, waking up sometimes at three o’clock in the
morning. “Why is it you and not he? There’s no regulation about it;
there’s no written law. Let the making way be equal as it usually is
when refined people meet; he moves half-way and you move half-way; you
pass with mutual respect.”
But that never happened, and I always moved aside, while he did not
even notice my making way for him. And lo and behold a bright idea
dawned upon me! “What,” I thought, “if I meet him and don’t move on one
side? What if I don’t move aside on purpose, even if I knock up against
him? How would that be?” This audacious idea took such a hold on me
that it gave me no peace. I was dreaming of it continually, horribly,
and I purposely went more frequently to the Nevsky in order to picture
more vividly how I should do it when I did do it. I was delighted. This
intention seemed to me more and more practical and possible.
“Of course I shall not really push him,” I thought, already more
good-natured in my joy. “I will simply not turn aside, will run up
against him, not very violently, but just shouldering each other—just
as much as decency permits. I will push against him just as much as he
pushes against me.” At last I made up my mind completely. But my
preparations took a great deal of time. To begin with, when I carried
out my plan I should need to be looking rather more decent, and so I
had to think of my get-up. “In case of emergency, if, for instance,
there were any sort of public scandal (and the public there is of the
most _recherché:_ the Countess walks there; Prince D. walks there; all
the literary world is there), I must be well dressed; that inspires
respect and of itself puts us on an equal footing in the eyes of the
society.”
With this object I asked for some of my salary in advance, and bought
at Tchurkin’s a pair of black gloves and a decent hat. Black gloves
seemed to me both more dignified and _bon ton_ than the lemon-coloured
ones which I had contemplated at first. “The colour is too gaudy, it
looks as though one were trying to be conspicuous,” and I did not take
the lemon-coloured ones. I had got ready long beforehand a good shirt,
with white bone studs; my overcoat was the only thing that held me
back. The coat in itself was a very good one, it kept me warm; but it
was wadded and it had a raccoon collar which was the height of
vulgarity. I had to change the collar at any sacrifice, and to have a
beaver one like an officer’s. For this purpose I began visiting the
Gostiny Dvor and after several attempts I pitched upon a piece of cheap
German beaver. Though these German beavers soon grow shabby and look
wretched, yet at first they look exceedingly well, and I only needed it
for the occasion. I asked the price; even so, it was too expensive.
After thinking it over thoroughly I decided to sell my raccoon collar.
The rest of the money—a considerable sum for me, I decided to borrow
from Anton Antonitch Syetotchkin, my immediate superior, an unassuming
person, though grave and judicious. He never lent money to anyone, but
I had, on entering the service, been specially recommended to him by an
important personage who had got me my berth. I was horribly worried. To
borrow from Anton Antonitch seemed to me monstrous and shameful. I did
not sleep for two or three nights. Indeed, I did not sleep well at that
time, I was in a fever; I had a vague sinking at my heart or else a
sudden throbbing, throbbing, throbbing! Anton Antonitch was surprised
at first, then he frowned, then he reflected, and did after all lend me
the money, receiving from me a written authorisation to take from my
salary a fortnight later the sum that he had lent me.
In this way everything was at last ready. The handsome beaver replaced
the mean-looking raccoon, and I began by degrees to get to work. It
would never have done to act offhand, at random; the plan had to be
carried out skilfully, by degrees. But I must confess that after many
efforts I began to despair: we simply could not run into each other. I
made every preparation, I was quite determined—it seemed as though we
should run into one another directly—and before I knew what I was doing
I had stepped aside for him again and he had passed without noticing
me. I even prayed as I approached him that God would grant me
determination. One time I had made up my mind thoroughly, but it ended
in my stumbling and falling at his feet because at the very last
instant when I was six inches from him my courage failed me. He very
calmly stepped over me, while I flew on one side like a ball. That
night I was ill again, feverish and delirious.
And suddenly it ended most happily. The night before I had made up my
mind not to carry out my fatal plan and to abandon it all, and with
that object I went to the Nevsky for the last time, just to see how I
would abandon it all. Suddenly, three paces from my enemy, I
unexpectedly made up my mind—I closed my eyes, and we ran full tilt,
shoulder to shoulder, against one another! I did not budge an inch and
passed him on a perfectly equal footing! He did not even look round and
pretended not to notice it; but he was only pretending, I am convinced
of that. I am convinced of that to this day! Of course, I got the worst
of it—he was stronger, but that was not the point. The point was that I
had attained my object, I had kept up my dignity, I had not yielded a
step, and had put myself publicly on an equal social footing with him.
I returned home feeling that I was fully avenged for everything. I was
delighted. I was triumphant and sang Italian arias. Of course, I will
not describe to you what happened to me three days later; if you have
read my first chapter you can guess for yourself. The officer was
afterwards transferred; I have not seen him now for fourteen years.
What is the dear fellow doing now? Whom is he walking over?
II
But the period of my dissipation would end and I always felt very sick
afterwards. It was followed by remorse—I tried to drive it away; I felt
too sick. By degrees, however, I grew used to that too. I grew used to
everything, or rather I voluntarily resigned myself to enduring it. But
I had a means of escape that reconciled everything—that was to find
refuge in “the sublime and the beautiful,” in dreams, of course. I was
a terrible dreamer, I would dream for three months on end, tucked away
in my corner, and you may believe me that at those moments I had no
resemblance to the gentleman who, in the perturbation of his chicken
heart, put a collar of German beaver on his great-coat. I suddenly
became a hero. I would not have admitted my six-foot lieutenant even if
he had called on me. I could not even picture him before me then. What
were my dreams and how I could satisfy myself with them—it is hard to
say now, but at the time I was satisfied with them. Though, indeed,
even now, I am to some extent satisfied with them. Dreams were
particularly sweet and vivid after a spell of dissipation; they came
with remorse and with tears, with curses and transports. There were
moments of such positive intoxication, of such happiness, that there
was not the faintest trace of irony within me, on my honour. I had
faith, hope, love. I believed blindly at such times that by some
miracle, by some external circumstance, all this would suddenly open
out, expand; that suddenly a vista of suitable activity—beneficent,
good, and, above all, _ready made_ (what sort of activity I had no
idea, but the great thing was that it should be all ready for me)—would
rise up before me—and I should come out into the light of day, almost
riding a white horse and crowned with laurel. Anything but the foremost
place I could not conceive for myself, and for that very reason I quite
contentedly occupied the lowest in reality. Either to be a hero or to
grovel in the mud—there was nothing between. That was my ruin, for when
I was in the mud I comforted myself with the thought that at other
times I was a hero, and the hero was a cloak for the mud: for an
ordinary man it was shameful to defile himself, but a hero was too
lofty to be utterly defiled, and so he might defile himself. It is
worth noting that these attacks of the “sublime and the beautiful”
visited me even during the period of dissipation and just at the times
when I was touching the bottom. They came in separate spurts, as though
reminding me of themselves, but did not banish the dissipation by their
appearance. On the contrary, they seemed to add a zest to it by
contrast, and were only sufficiently present to serve as an appetising
sauce. That sauce was made up of contradictions and sufferings, of
agonising inward analysis, and all these pangs and pin-pricks gave a
certain piquancy, even a significance to my dissipation—in fact,
completely answered the purpose of an appetising sauce. There was a
certain depth of meaning in it. And I could hardly have resigned myself
to the simple, vulgar, direct debauchery of a clerk and have endured
all the filthiness of it. What could have allured me about it then and
have drawn me at night into the street? No, I had a lofty way of
getting out of it all.
And what loving-kindness, oh Lord, what loving-kindness I felt at times
in those dreams of mine! in those “flights into the sublime and the
beautiful”; though it was fantastic love, though it was never applied
to anything human in reality, yet there was so much of this love that
one did not feel afterwards even the impulse to apply it in reality;
that would have been superfluous. Everything, however, passed
satisfactorily by a lazy and fascinating transition into the sphere of
art, that is, into the beautiful forms of life, lying ready, largely
stolen from the poets and novelists and adapted to all sorts of needs
and uses. I, for instance, was triumphant over everyone; everyone, of
course, was in dust and ashes, and was forced spontaneously to
recognise my superiority, and I forgave them all. I was a poet and a
grand gentleman, I fell in love; I came in for countless millions and
immediately devoted them to humanity, and at the same time I confessed
before all the people my shameful deeds, which, of course, were not
merely shameful, but had in them much that was “sublime and beautiful”
something in the Manfred style. Everyone would kiss me and weep (what
idiots they would be if they did not), while I should go barefoot and
hungry preaching new ideas and fighting a victorious Austerlitz against
the obscurantists. Then the band would play a march, an amnesty would
be declared, the Pope would agree to retire from Rome to Brazil; then
there would be a ball for the whole of Italy at the Villa Borghese on
the shores of Lake Como, Lake Como being for that purpose transferred
to the neighbourhood of Rome; then would come a scene in the bushes,
and so on, and so on—as though you did not know all about it? You will
say that it is vulgar and contemptible to drag all this into public